TWISTED:  Tuesday 9PM on ABCFamily Previously… on TWISTED:  Danny Desai (Avan Jogia) served 5 years in jail after (as far as we know) strangling his aunt to death as an 11-year old.  Now he’s out, and his one-time best pals Jo (Madelaine Hasson) and Lacey (Kylie Bunbury) have–a little uneasily–resumed their friendships with him.  […]

  MOTIVE:  Wednesday 10PM on ABC Welcome to summer network TV. The broadcast networks talk a good game about the new 12-months-a-year world of television–and to its credit, CBS has been relatively ambitious with Under the Dome and this summer’s Extant, a sci-fi thriller starring Halle Berry–but for the most part, once May sweeps end, […]

> ALCATRAZ was a show–pardon the use of past tense:  the series still has a pulse, but recent ratings make it an increasing longshot for a repeat sentence–that just never found its groove.  Convoluted but obvious, original and yet impersonal, the show was rarely terrible and never essential. The series was, as they say, “troubled.”  […]

  THE BOY AND THE HERON (GKids – Dec. 8):  Hiyao Miyazaki, a legend of animation (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke), had announced his retirement as a feature film director a decade ago, upon the release of The Wind Rises.  But at the age of 82, he’s returned with The Boy and the […]

  SKYFALL:  Worth A Ticket – Bond Reborn For years–decades, actually–there have been periodic murmurings that a “real” director would one day take the helm of a James Bond movie.  At various times, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino were among those mentioned, and apparently at least some of them did have discussions with […]

  EMANUEL AND THE TRUTH ABOUT FISHES is deeply, satisfyingly strange.  In a way, it’s a validation not just of Sundance, but the whole film festival system that is now our main way of finding out about distinctive new talent.  It also tells a story based in large part on a single plot development that, while […]

  AGENT CARTER:  Tuesday 9PM on ABC – Potential DVR Alert Marvel’s AGENT CARTER was more sure-footed in its start than the fantasy factory’s Agents of SHIELD was–maybe more than the improved SHIELD is even now.  With only 8 hours to show its stuff, filling in for SHIELD while that series takes its winter break, Carter is […]

  “Universes” are all the rage among studios and networks these days, thanks to the rise of the Marvel/Disney empire.  DC/Warners is trying to duplicate that success (its movie and TV universes are somewhat confusingly separate, and its main accomplishment so far is all but colonizing the CW network through Greg Berlanti’s quartet of series), […]